16 Comments:

Could it be said that "I love you" doesn't necessarily express a "feeling" at all?Sometimes I think of love as an intention ... a mindset ... of looking for that person's good, that person's edification etc...(It is nice when that intention is accompanied by feelings and/or appropriate desire. ;~) )

Depends on who I say it to. Like Rose said, towards some people, I'm not expressing a feeling, but a bond we have in Christ or a bond we have as family. Others, yes, I have said the phrase to express feelings or desires.

Wouldn't there be a distinction between feeling love and feelings of love? Feeling love would be the consequence of being loved while feelings of love should be the consequence of loving someone I would think. At present I'm thinking that more often than not when one would say I love you it is based on the anticipation of being loved rather than the consequence of actually loving someone else. What do you think?

Hi KcI Love You is a emotion and a devotion. If I tell a person that I love them , it means that I wanting to be with them forever with the Lord. I do not use those words in less I mean it.My heart is so soft with love that if I say I Love You you can take that to the Bank. Jesus is my Love .

I've said this before in comments when you were talking about love a while back and I'll offer it, again. You guys need to take a look at and read C. S. Lewis's The Four Loves in which he describes and defines the four types of love found and as demonstrated in the four different Greek words used in the Bible to define what we Americans "simply" call "love."

The four Greek words (I don't read Greek, myself, but know the definitions of certain Greek words, as I'm sure you all do in your Biblical studies) defined in English are (1) affection, (2) friendship, (3) erotic love, and (4) the love of God, which I'm sure you all are familiar with as "agape."

Not only Matthew, from Jesus' "Sermon on the Mount," as we like to call it, but I Corinthians 13 describe "the (agape) love of God" and what it entails and means for our own individual lives in all of our dealings with everyone else. I would say ALL the time with every person we meet in every kind of circumstance, regardless of what other types of love our relationships should include.

In other words - the love of God would be first and foremost and dictate and be demonstrated by our actions and attitudes toward all others, including those for whom we have affection, those of whom we call friends, that one person (speaking Biblically here, I believe, which would dictate that we not act on those "feelings" we might have along that same line for others of the opposite sex in our lives) with whom we have and experience erotic love.

The love of God - is what Jesus is talking about, I believe, in Matthew in the passage you set forth, and is the KIND of love we are to demonstrate to everyone. Not that we always are successful in doing that, but that should be our goal.

Oops - I've just gotten a long distance phone call, so I've got to run. I'll be BACK!

Hey Dee! Thanks for weighing in on this one. I'm really wondering what it is someone is actually relating when they say "I love you". I think for believers it should be quite different than for non-believers but I'm not sure we can restrict it to agape. I'm suspecting that we (mankind) actually know very little about love and that as a people our knowledge is decreasing, not increasing. My basis for that is my belief that God is love and that to fully know love we must fully know God. But still we say, "Ilove you".

LOL @ Dorsey.I'm not sure everyone understands what you are saying, Dorsey.

But thats ok, it cracked me up bad the first time I heard you say it, i almost broke my back!

Kc, Love is never having to say your sorry..... How many times have I heard that. Which is a lie. Love is being able to say your sorry and love is forgiving the person that wronged you.Of course the love that sustains the world never has to say its sorry. He has nothing to be sorry about.